Ruby Blast looks like Zynga’s next new game

Arcade matching game Ruby Blast appears to be Zynga’s next new game, which would make that two arcade game launches in as many quarters for the social game giant.

Screenshots sent to ISG by an anonymous tipster don’t reveal much besides a customer service staging listing and a title page screenshot. The customer service page does not list Zynga-published titles like Pettington Park or Woodland Heroes, implying that Ruby Blast is an in-house developed title.

A Google search of “Zynga Ruby Blast” brings up a link to the app on Facebook — but following it turns up a Page Not Found result. Based on the title screen, Ruby Blast seems to be a match-3 game with a digging theme, perhaps similar to Tetris Stars where the goal of the game is to get to the bottom of a level as fast as possible by completing lines and activating explosive powerups. Its name suggests similar gameplay to GameHouse’s Blast franchise, which is currently led on Facebook by Collapse Blast.

Zynga’s is better known for its role-playing and simulation games like FarmVille or CityVille, but in the last 12 months, the developer has turned to other genres in an attempt to broaden its audience reach. In the arcade genre, Zynga released match-3 arcade game Bubble Safari early last month both on Facebook and its own platform, Zynga.com. On the Facebook side, the game is up to 19.8 million monthly active users and 6.9 daily active users as recorded by our AppData traffic tracking service. Bubble Safari is also currently ranked No. 129 on the Top Grossing chart in Facebook’s newly-launched App Center.

The big story last week was Zynga’s falling stock, which dropped all the way to $5.02 at its lowest ebb. Pundits blame the decline both on Facebook’s lackluster IPO and disappointed investors and on Zynga’s own failure to release another high profile game on the order of CastleVille or Draw Something. In its Q1 2012 earnings report, the developer announced higher-than-ever bookings and an outlook of $1.425 billion to $1.5 billion in total bookings for the year. Zynga’s second quarter ends on the final day of this month.

We’ve reached out to Zynga for comment and will update this story when we hear back.

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